The full upstream README, mirrored here for reference. Install config, tool schemas, adoption signals, and an original overview live on the Scotcourts listing page.
Scottish court and tribunal judgment search — Court of Session, High Court of Justiciary, the National Personal Injury Court, Sheriff Appeal Courts, Sheriff Court civil/criminal, and the Scottish Upper Tribunal chambers, from the Scottish Courts and Tribunals Service (SCTS), published from 1999 onward.
Part of Pipeworx — an MCP gateway connecting AI agents to 1683+ live data sources.
search_scottish_judgments(query?, court?, from_date?, to_date?, page?, limit?)
— searches the judgment index; returns title, court, judges, date and a
document_link to the PDF, plus the true corpus match count.get_scottish_judgment(document_link?, query?) — resolves a judgment
document_link (or looks one up by case name/query first) and confirms the
PDF is actually reachable: HTTP status, content-type, size. Does not
extract PDF text — SCTS judgments are PDF-only and no PDF-text-extraction
dependency exists anywhere in this catalog; text_extracted: false is
always returned alongside pdf_url.Keyless. No API key, no cookie, no bearer token — verified live with a plain
curl (no browser session) against api.pa.web.scotcourts.gov.uk/web/search.
https://api.pa.web.scotcourts.gov.uk/web/search (POST, JSON) — the
judgment search index behind the client-rendered SPA at
scotcourts.gov.uk/judgments/#/. Do not use
scotcourts.gov.uk/search-results/?filterType=Judgments — that is the
generic sitewide search (server-rendered HTML) and returns news articles and
hearing/livestream pages mixed in with real judgments; it was ruled out as a
dead end for this pack (fleet #2259).https://www.scotcourts.gov.uk<documentLink> — the judgment PDF itself.
documentLink in the API response is relative; resolve it against this
host./judgments/ itself
(/apps/scts-web-apps.min.js) is shared site-wide chrome and does not
contain the judgments app's own logic — it is loaded dynamically at
runtime, so the request shape was captured by driving the live page with
devtools/a monkey-patched window.fetch, not by reading a static bundle.filters shape (proven live, both in-browser and via a bare curl):
{"field":"Court","value":"<exact dropdown string>"} — values are
NOT guessable from a court's common name (e.g. the dropdown says "Court of
Session", not "Court of Session (Outer House)"). The full list is in
COURTS in src/index.ts.{"field":"AdditionalDate","value":"<from>|<to>"} — either
side of the pipe may be blank for an open-ended range ("2020-01-01|" =
from-only, "|2020-01-01" = to-only). Both forms verified live.Court value does not error — it returns HTTP 200
with results: [] and pagination.count.total: 0, which reads exactly
like "no such judgments" if not caught. This pack validates court
against the known list before sending the filter.pagination.count.total is the true corpus match count; results.length
is capped by the limit sent in the request. Surface total, never
results.length, as "how many judgments matched."@pipeworx/uk-caselaw).Add to your MCP client (Claude Desktop, Cursor, Windsurf, etc.):
tools/list at https://gateway.pipeworx.io/scotcourts/mcp returns the tools in the table
above plus the shared Pipeworx meta-tools — ask_pipeworx,
discover_tools, search_within, remember/recall and the rest of the
gateway-wide set. So the tool count you see is larger than this table: a
single-pack endpoint currently lists roughly 30 shared tools alongside the
pack's own. The connection's initialize response states its exact scope, and
is the authoritative answer for a given day.
This is deliberate, not multiplexing by accident. The meta-tools are what let a
scoped connection answer a question this pack does not cover — via
ask_pipeworx, which routes across the whole catalog — without you adding a
second MCP server. There is currently no way to mount a pack endpoint without
them; if the extra schemas cost you more context than the routing is worth,
connect to the full gateway once rather than to several pack endpoints.
Or connect to the full Pipeworx gateway to get every pack's tools listed directly, instead of just this one's:
Both URLs reach the same gateway and the same 1683+ data sources. The
only difference is which pack's tools are listed directly; ask_pipeworx
reaches all of them from either one.
No account needed for the first calls. Inspect any tool: GET https://gateway.pipeworx.io/v1/tools/search_scottish_judgments. Find one: POST https://gateway.pipeworx.io/v1/tools/search_packs with {"query":"..."}.
This package also runs as a local stdio MCP server — no Pipeworx account, no gateway round-trip:
Or run it directly to confirm it starts:
It speaks MCP over stdin/stdout and answers initialize/tools/list/tools/call
for only this pack's tools — none of the shared meta-tools the gateway
connection above adds. Same source, same tools, no ask_pipeworx routing.
Instead of calling tools directly, you can ask questions in plain English — this works on the pack endpoint above as well as on the full gateway:
The gateway picks the right tool and fills the arguments automatically.
MIT